Today is #GivingTuesday! Your chance to make a difference

What is #GivingTuesday? It’s a global day of giving, held the Tuesday after Thanksgiving (and Black Friday), and a great way to give back to those non-profits and charities you find deserving.

Today is #GivingTuesday. We could sure use your help.

For #GivingTuesday 2017, you can help our society meet some goals. We’ve had a pretty good year – a great Ice Cream Social, excellent mini-lectures, and more and more interest in our research library. We’ve had successful events all year, in fact: our Spring and Fall auctions were well attended, as was our Haunted Mansion. Pine Grove is looking pretty good as we go into the Victorian Open House and the holiday season.

But there’s always more to do! Our house needs a little TLC. We need an upgrade to our database software, web hosting costs continue to grow, and we’ve got some tree management to undertake.

This year, consider a donation that will go directly to one of these areas that need attention:

The House FundPhoto from 1974. We’ve come a long way!

But there’s lots more to do!

We have doors to protect by painting them. We have screen doors to replace. There are yellowed plastic window covers that need to go.

We need new (but made to look old) trim to close a gap between the staircase and the wall in our foyer.

We have a foundation that needs to be monitored – we’ve purchased a “crack monitoring kit” (go ahead and laugh – we did) to let us know if the house is moving in any unwanted directions.

Your donation to the House Fund will offset the costs of these needed repairs, and that crack monitoring kit.

We have to replace this kind of thing. We don’t know how to change the tape!

Our technology needs are pretty simple: We have Pastperfect software that needs an upgrade, which will let us manage the collection better. Our web hosting costs are up: they will continue to grow as we bring our collection and archive information onto the web. And we need some network cabling completed, which will let our volunteers use our computers more efficiently.

Your donation to our technology fund will help offset the costs of making the public aware of our valuable collection of research materials, will help our patrons do better research, and make our volunteer researchers’ lives easier.

We have a dead tree – and it’s not the one in the photo. That one just had a branch fall off for no apparent reason. The dead tree (an elm) overhangs our carriage house, and must be removed. The tree in the photo needs to be evaluated by an arborist. Branches don’t just “fall off” after all.

If none of these options suit your fancy, please consider a donation to our general fund. The general fund is used to cover our operating costs: payroll, taxes, and other administrative costs. It’s also used to cover expenses from other areas that weren’t budgeted.

This year, there were some unexpected costs in web hosting, animal management, and other areas. Your donation to the general fund will help us offset these costs.